This tour does not match the level of quality I experienced in the exceptional Peru Panorama or Morocco Kasbahs and Deserts. I will not be recommending Korea to Japan: Epic Eats & Bright City Lights to anyone as the best parts of our stay in South Korea and Japan was when we were not with the group. The hostels were subpar, the fact that there were no meals included in Japan is unacceptable when 'Epic Eats' is literally in the title of the tour we signed up for, and the included meals in South Korea did not showcase the best of the country's cuisine. My husband and I had three sushi restaurant experiences in Japan and the one that was selected by the tour was by far the worst of the three and it wasn't necessarily cheaper than the second best. In Jeju Island, we opted to leave the group potluck so that we could experience real local black pork and it was one of the best meals we had. During my time in Peru and Morocco, it would have been unthinkable to have preferred to leave the group meals but in this case, we had to seek out the culinary experience that the tour promised but did not deliver. There was so much free time during the tour that we might as well not have done the tour. We were so excited about this trip and the people we might meet but it was incredibly disappointing. Grouping people who sign up for different tours is a terrible idea. It created a great deal of discord as everyone had different expectations of the trip and no one was ever satisfied with the optional group activities. We also sped through many of the locations my husband and I had been dearly anticipating visiting. The group was entirely too large and on two occasions, I was made responsible for the safe travel transit of the group (once in South Korea and the second internationally having to guide my fellow group members from arrival in Gimpo, switching terminals, and arriving in Haneda Airport) which I did not sign up for nor receive compensation for. This tour was good enough for people who want a superficial cultural engagement with the countries they visit, who want to party, get drunk, and barely remember where they have been. This is not what a G Adventures experience is supposed to represent. The tour did not do justice to the countries we visited, I'm relieved that we had scheduled our own time in South Korea and Japan before and after the tour - that is when the true cultural engagement happened during our trip.
